Talk:Human/FAQdraft

This is a draft of a possible future FAQ page for Human. It is planned for use, if needed, once there is substantial consensus for a particular lead image.

The main points of this FAQ can be summarized as:

• For the sake of neutrality and consistency, this article will tend to default to conventions in use on all other articles.
• An article's lead image should provide accurate, straightforward visual information about the article's subject.
• However, an article's lead image is not meant to represent or symbolize every possible permutation of its subject. It functions only as an example.

More detail is given on each of these points, and other common questions, below.

To view the response to a question, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Q1: Is the lead image supposed to represent all humanity?

A1: No. Representing all of humanity, without making anyone feel excluded, is an impossible task.

The function of a lead image is to illustrate important features of the subject — in the case of Human, these include an upright bipedal gait, hands specialized for manipulating tools, and use of cultural products such as clothing. The function of a lead image is not to encapsulate the full range of its subject's diversity and variation. Indeed, there is no lead image on all of Wikipedia that even attempts to summarize every aspect of its subject. If this were a requirement, it would mean...

• ... the lead image for Star would need to depict every star.
• ... the lead image for Elvis Presley would need to depict him at every age, since no one age could encapsulate his life.
• ... the lead images for Quadruped, Carnivore, Frog, Primate, Eukaryote, Life, etc. would need to depict every organism in that group.

And so on. Clearly this is unfeasible. Even if it were possible to depict so much in an image, it would be less useful than just showing an example. Thus, at the top of Bird we only illustrate one bird (Petroica boodang), and at the top of Molecule we only illustrate one molecule (atisane). Atisane isn't a particularly important or "representative" molecule — it doesn't even have its own article! — but it is a molecule, which is all its portrayal signifies.

By picking just one example, we leave space for showing important details of that example which would be obscured if we shrank it in order to fit multiple photos. This is why the overwhelming majority of articles covering diverse subject matters do not employ collages. What a collage gains in diversity, it loses in detail and clarity. In this case, the topic covered at Human is best served with a single image — a collage of faces, for example, would fail to illustrate the human body.

Q2: Shouldn't the lead image show all the major groups of humans?

A2: No. There is no way to decide which groups of humans are the "major" ones, without violating Wikipedia's policy of maintaining a neutral point of view.

As noted in Q1, no article on Wikipedia tries to visually encapsulate every permutation of its subject matter. This is a good thing. If our goal in choosing an image is not to illustrate every major "type" of humans, but simply to depict any old random human, there is vastly less potential for our biases to infect our selection. In contrast, if it were our goal to visually represent "humanity" in all its diversity at the top of Human, immediately we would have to appeal to our personal opinions...

• ... about which ways of differentiating people best illustrate human variation.
• ... about how many variants warrant inclusion.
• ... about which variants are important enough to include, and which can be left out.

For example, if we tried to create a collage of every different human "race" (a questionable biological designation at best), we would simply be showing our own bias toward the racialist notion that the most important difference between humans is racial. (Why not focus on showing different body types, ages, religions, or hair colors instead?) Furthermore, we would then show our biases in choosing which typology of humans to adopt, and in choosing which "types" are most important. Even attempting to show "humanity" in all its variation opens up a truly bottomless can of worms.

Fortunately, this article is not called "humanity", but simply "human". We are fully justified in just picking some human off the street as an example, rather than getting wrapped up in unverifiable species-wide generalizations and categories.

Q3: Why isn't the lead image more abstract or symbolic?

A3: Because any attempt to symbolically or nonliterally depict humans will subtly express an editorial opinion about what the "essence" or "nature" of humanity is. Even if we pick a famous artist's work to put at the top of Human, the fact that we chose that particular work, and not another, will show that we endorse certain non-encyclopedic points of view about humanity. The only real way to avoid this pitfall is to not pick an image that is even remotely symbolic or nonliteral — a completely literal, straightforward photograph simply depicting a human, with no more "deep meaning" than our lead image for Frog has, is the most neutral option available.

It is also worth noting that most abstract depictions of humanity remove a great deal of visual information. Wikipedia's purpose is educational, and our readers include non-native English speakers, young children, neurodivergent people, and other readers who will be best served by a clear, unambiguous, and factually rich depiction of the topic at hand.

Imaginative works also tend to be much more subjective and idiosyncratic than photographs, reflecting the creator's state of mind as much as the subject matter itself. The purpose of an article's lead image is to accurately depict the article's subject matter, which in this case means accurately depicting a human.

Q4: How was the lead image selected?

A4: Although strictly speaking the selection process should not matter, it is understandable that users may be concerned about the possibility of favoritism or bias.

This image was simply the first one an editor found which depicted adult male and female humans, standing side-by-side, in a high-quality, full-color, free-use photograph. It was located by searching through free image categories on Wikimedia Commons. Specifically, it was found near the top of Category:Couples, owing to its file name starting with "A" — hence if any particular bias can be said to play a role in this image selection, it can only be an alphabetic one.

Q5: Why does the Human article use the third person? Aren't we humans?

A5: The third person ("Humans are..." or "They are..." as opposed to "We are...") is simply the conventional mode of writing for Wikipedia and other reference works. We realize this may cause some phrases in Human to sound quite strange — "a majority of humans professes some variety of religious or spiritual belief" sounds almost like it was written by space aliens.* However, the occasional stylistic awkwardness this approach may lead to is still preferable to the alternative of inconsistency.

If we were to use "we" in the Human article (as opposed to just in informal FAQs...), it would mean sometimes switching strangely between persons as we narrow our topic of discussion. For example, even if an editor were female, she would be forced to write things like "We humans, and especially those females...." Whenever a subgroup of humanity became the article's focus, we would need to switch to the third person; a sentence about humans would use "we", but a sentence about adults, Asians, engineers, or heterosexuals would need to use "they". It is far simpler to just consistently use the third person in all contexts, even if this doesn't always seem completely natural.

A related issue is the fact that, as a general rule, Wikipedia prefers to avoid self-references. In addition to being human, all editors on this site happen to be English speakers — yet we treat our article on the English language the same way we treat every other language article, in order to avoid bias and inconsistency. Likewise, we treat Wikipedia the same as other websites and reference tools. Analogously, we ought to aspire to treat Human in much the same way that we treat every other species article. Ideally, we should make exceptions of Human only where objective, verifiable facts demand that we make exceptions (e.g., in employing a lengthy culture section). This is the simplest and easiest way to avoid bias and to prevent editorial disputes: When it doubt, follow the rest of Wikipedia's lead.

* Another method some editors use to help maintain a neutral point of view is to imagine being an extraterrestrial writing about a strange species called "human." How would your perspective be different? Do be careful not to overdo it, though — too much "alien mode" will just make the article seem even more bizarrely worded!

Q6: Why don't you include more information on...?

A6: If you feel that a vitally important and directly relevant topic is being neglected on Human, feel free to explain why and to suggest a concise way of including that information. However, it should be kept in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of topics we could discuss on this article, and the overwhelming majority of these will have to be neglected simply to keep the page from becoming unreadably long.

Fortunately, we also have hundreds of thousands of articles on Wikipedia for specifically addressing many of those topics. Even the most important issues can't be handled in much detail on this particular article, but there is usually a separate article addressing the topic in greater detail. Rather than focusing on specific issues, try linking to the more general articles when they're relevant; that way, we provide a link to multiple related topics at once, allowing interested readers to continue exploring particular aspects of the human species.

For suggestions on finding a balance between too little and too much information, see Wikipedia:Summary style.

Past discussions For further information, see the numerous past discussions on these topics in the archives of Talk:Human: